A look at three years when snow was at the plate for opening day in Cleveland WEWS

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CLEVELAND - WEWS reporter Paul Kiska has a saying he uses year-round no matter the Cleveland weather: "This could be Opening Day." And his observation is true.

Opening Day baseball over the years along the North Coast been snowed out, played in drizzle, started in warm sunshine while nine innings later, cold weather and fog take over.

The video in our player contains three example of winter reminding us he wasn't quite ready to give up his icy grip.

First up, a story Paul Kiska did in 2001. Just one week prior to that year's April 2 opener, snow covered the field and icicles clung to much of the Jacob's Field seating area. Paul, who pitched in high school at Lorain Catholic , throws a perfect snowball strike to finish his snow story.

One week later, according to the official box score, the temperature at game time was 54 degrees. The Indians beat the White Sox 12-5.

Next, fast forward to April 6, 2007 for John Kosich's story of the infamous snow out. The grounds crew resorted to leaf blowers to blow snow off the field. It worked, for a while.

The Indians were one out away from an official game win against the Seattle Mariners.

Mariners' manager Mike Hargrove, known as the "human rain delay" in his days as a player for his deliberate style of preparing in the batter's box, delayed enough with conferences with umpires. The game was canceled.

Not only was the 2007 opener snowed out, the entire series was canceled. The Indians played their next home opponents, the Anaheim Angels, in Milwaukee.

Finally, I've included a cruel April Fool's joke. April 1, 1996, the opener against the Yankees was postponed due to 7 inches of heavy, wet snow. As you can see in the story from Joe Pagonakis, later that day, the snow was gone, melted away.

Joe ends his story with an interview with the "Professor", the late sports talk show host Geoff Sindelar.

The next day, the Yankees beat the Tribe 7-1 the begin the 1996 season.

Play ball!

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.